"An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the total taxable income of Americans earning over $100,000 in 2008 was $1.582 trillion. The correct figure is $3.4 trillion." (FactCheck.org)
[But of course, the original incorrect story was spread all over the Web before it was retracted, so you're going to keep on hearing this error stated with complete conviction - it was in the Wall Street Journal!]
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[I've heard this before: Even if you taxed the top wage-earners 100% of their income, it wouldn't fix the debt problem!
In fact, I heard it just yesterday from an embattled Republican congressman at a town hall meeting.
Jonathan Chait at The New Republic debunks this claim in an article entitled WSJ Edit Page Disproves Own Point. (It's not too difficult, but there are a lot of numbers; you may want to have a pencil and pad handy. But it's worth it.)]
"To be clear, nobody is proposing a 100% tax rate on the rich, or anything close to it, and nobody believes that such a tax rate wouldn't severely depress the income base. The point is that the arithmetical illiterates at the Journal set out to prove one point and wound up proving the very opposite. I don't know who wrote this particular editorial, but the method of setting out to prove a point, using a series of obvious statistical fallacies to cheat, and then proving the opposite of your point anyway without realizing it is a trademark of Journal editorial writer Stephen Moore." [Moore is someone I find particularly odious on Fox News or the Sunday talk shows.]
"....
"There's always a problem involved in wasting one's time examining very bad arguments. But organs like the Journal editorial page -- which just won a Pulitzer Prize! -- are influential and prestigious. I think very few people realize that these people are just pure clowns. They're not messing up complex economic theories here. They're messing up basic arithmetic."
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